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  #81  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 3:13 AM
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Sudbury is straight forward. When you get into the Districts of Northern Ontario, you end up with hilarious situations like Thunder Bay is responsible for collecting all of the property tax in Thunder Bay District and then remits the money to the province (meaning someone living just outside Marathon, Ontario, 5 hours away, has to go to Thunder Bay to pay their property tax). Thunder Bay must also provide ambulance services for the entire region (Superior North EMS covers Upsala to Marathon, and is an outside board of the city of Thunder Bay). The Thunder Bay District Social Services Board, headquartered in Thunder Bay (right behind city hall, in a larger building) is primarily funded by the city, but must provide social housing and administer welfare to the entire region. The especially fun part about that one is that while Thunder Bay makes up over 75% of the DSSAB's service population, it only gets 6 of its 13 board seats, meaning non-Thunder Bayers get to decide how Thunder Bay's money is spent! (Spoiler: they don't spend it on Thunder Bay.)

Northern Ontario (except Sudbury) is a great example of what happens when you remove a level of government and then fail to reassign the responsibilities of that government to the remaining two governments. Tens of thousands of Northern Ontarians don't even get to vote on municipal election day because they have no municipal government at all! Roads are maintained through roads boards which are basically just small committees of connected people who decide what street the guy with a plow truck will plow first. Since they pay their land tax at Thunder Bay's city hall, they think they should have a say in how we do things in the city, because they don't understand the difference between the two things!
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  #82  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 3:23 AM
wave46 wave46 is offline
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Originally Posted by vid View Post
Sudbury is straight forward. When you get into the Districts of Northern Ontario, you end up with hilarious situations like Thunder Bay is responsible for collecting all of the property tax in Thunder Bay District and then remits the money to the province (meaning someone living just outside Marathon, Ontario, 5 hours away, has to go to Thunder Bay to pay their property tax). Thunder Bay must also provide ambulance services for the entire region (Superior North EMS covers Upsala to Marathon, and is an outside board of the city of Thunder Bay). The Thunder Bay District Social Services Board, headquartered in Thunder Bay (right behind city hall, in a larger building) is primarily funded by the city, but must provide social housing and administer welfare to the entire region. The especially fun part about that one is that while Thunder Bay makes up over 75% of the DSSAB's service population, it only gets 6 of its 13 board seats, meaning non-Thunder Bayers get to decide how Thunder Bay's money is spent! (Spoiler: they don't spend it on Thunder Bay.)

Northern Ontario (except Sudbury) is a great example of what happens when you remove a level of government and then fail to reassign the responsibilities of that government to the remaining two governments. Tens of thousands of Northern Ontarians don't even get to vote on municipal election day because they have no municipal government at all! Roads are maintained through roads boards which are basically just small committees of connected people who decide what street the guy with a plow truck will plow first. Since they pay their land tax at Thunder Bay's city hall, they think they should have a say in how we do things in the city, because they don't understand the difference between the two things!
Yeah, the Districts thing always confused me - it's a not-level of government. I've always lived inside incorporated municipalities, so who does what is usually reasonably clear.

But the residents of these areas sure do love the minimal taxes and bleeding the next nearest place for their services.

I don't know. I think some county-like government might be a good idea, but I imagine the residents of those areas don't want to pay for that 'luxury'.
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  #83  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 3:52 AM
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Yeah that's my point: Kitchener-Waterloo should merge into one city.
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  #84  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 3:56 AM
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Originally Posted by urbandreamer View Post
Yeah that's my point: Kitchener-Waterloo should merge into one city.
I agree, and Kitchener would be happy to, but Waterloo refuses to consider it and the Province gives no sign of forcing it. In the meantime, the two cities maintain an excellent relationship with each other in all regards - I can't think of a significant contentious issue between them, going back decades.
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  #85  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 4:16 AM
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Originally Posted by wave46 View Post
Yeah, the Districts thing always confused me - it's a not-level of government. I've always lived inside incorporated municipalities, so who does what is usually reasonably clear.

But the residents of these areas sure do love the minimal taxes and bleeding the next nearest place for their services.

I don't know. I think some county-like government might be a good idea, but I imagine the residents of those areas don't want to pay for that 'luxury'.
Honestly I would love to see the conniption that would ensue if Thunder Bay absorbed the Lappe townships. We'd probably never have a progressive mayor again but we could build a new economy off their tears!
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  #86  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 4:50 AM
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Originally Posted by wave46 View Post
It's hard to say whether amalgamation is a bad thing.

Certainly, there are dozens of little 'cities' of a few blocks each in New Jersey near New York City that might function much better as a single city.

Would Winnipeg have weathered the 1980s and 1990s as well if its well-off citizens could flee outside of the old city's limits into the dozen smaller cities and starve the city of revenue, a la Detroit?

The Ontario amalgamations aimed to remove a whole level of government, which didn't work because, uh, the responsibilities of that government still existed. So, when the Region of Sudbury became 'The City of Greater Sudbury' all the Regional stuff still had to be taken care of. It might have made certain things simpler (Regional plows used to have to raise their plow blades when they weren't on "regional" roads, which made locals wonder) but it made other things much more complex.

That's why the 'City of Ottawa' encompasses a pile of farmland outside the City that doesn't really share the character of the city itself. Whereas something like Nepean is basically contiguous with the City and probably should be a part of it.

Interestingly, the City that might have benefited most from amalgamation might've been Kitchener-Waterloo, but coincidentally (wink, wink) they were spared that pleasure.
There's definitely no universally correct answer on whether amalgamation is good or bad, as it for sure depends on context. As I touched on in my earlier post, socioeconomic diversity is one of the benefits of larger cities. The Detroit example is an excellent case in point, and it's possible Winnipeg could have seen something similar, though likely to a lesser extent. At the same time, all the sprawl Winnipeg keeps building will hurt the city's longer-term finances, whereas an inner-city Winnipeg would be saved from this, so it gets complicated.

I do agree with your point though. In Metro Vancouver, the municipalities with the largest poor/working-class populations also have wealthier areas to balance them out (Vancouver, Surrey, to a lesser extent Maple Ridge). If this wasn't the case and there were municipalities burdened with high service demand and low fiscal capacity, then amalgamation may be appropriate. This brings back the point though that, region-wide housing affordability issues aside, virtually every municipality in Metro Vancouver is thriving. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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  #87  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 5:30 AM
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Originally Posted by vid View Post
Sudbury is straight forward. When you get into the Districts of Northern Ontario, you end up with hilarious situations like Thunder Bay is responsible for collecting all of the property tax in Thunder Bay District and then remits the money to the province (meaning someone living just outside Marathon, Ontario, 5 hours away, has to go to Thunder Bay to pay their property tax). Thunder Bay must also provide ambulance services for the entire region (Superior North EMS covers Upsala to Marathon, and is an outside board of the city of Thunder Bay). The Thunder Bay District Social Services Board, headquartered in Thunder Bay (right behind city hall, in a larger building) is primarily funded by the city, but must provide social housing and administer welfare to the entire region. The especially fun part about that one is that while Thunder Bay makes up over 75% of the DSSAB's service population, it only gets 6 of its 13 board seats, meaning non-Thunder Bayers get to decide how Thunder Bay's money is spent! (Spoiler: they don't spend it on Thunder Bay.)

Northern Ontario (except Sudbury) is a great example of what happens when you remove a level of government and then fail to reassign the responsibilities of that government to the remaining two governments. Tens of thousands of Northern Ontarians don't even get to vote on municipal election day because they have no municipal government at all! Roads are maintained through roads boards which are basically just small committees of connected people who decide what street the guy with a plow truck will plow first. Since they pay their land tax at Thunder Bay's city hall, they think they should have a say in how we do things in the city, because they don't understand the difference between the two things!
Well said and I can confirm that everything you wrote is true.

In Cochrane District, Timmins municipal taxpayers pay something like 2 million dollars a year to the Cochrane District DSSAB for services (ambulance, social services, etc.) for the towns to the North that are within the district. Our former mayor pointed it out and the other communities' town councils went crazy and called him cruel for even mentioning it. Timmins has 6 of of 13 seats on the board but has about 60% of the population of the area served.
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  #88  
Old Posted Jan 23, 2020, 5:34 AM
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Originally Posted by wave46 View Post
Yeah, the Districts thing always confused me - it's a not-level of government. I've always lived inside incorporated municipalities, so who does what is usually reasonably clear.

But the residents of these areas sure do love the minimal taxes and bleeding the next nearest place for their services.

I don't know. I think some county-like government might be a good idea, but I imagine the residents of those areas don't want to pay for that 'luxury'.
I know that the previous Liberal government has plans to impose much higher provinces fees for people living in unorganized townships in order to pay for services or so that they could have reliable services. I'm not sure what the current Ford government plans to do if anything.
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  #89  
Old Posted Jan 24, 2020, 2:06 AM
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I think they cancelled it. Everyone living out there is very right wing and influential. They love to come to Thunder Bay and complain about the roads as if having 3,000 cars drive into the city on the same 3 roads every single day without paying anything towards the city roads budget is a totally ok and normal thing to do.
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  #90  
Old Posted Jan 30, 2020, 12:22 AM
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Odyssey Odyssey is offline
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Originally Posted by megadude View Post
I've heard others in the Ontario section mention Windsor suburbs and even though I went to school there a long time ago, I never thought of those towns as suburbs, but rather towns in the same county or just nearby towns.
Windsor suburbs/bedroom communities are Amherstburg, LaSalle, Tecumseh and Lakeshore Township (specifically the communities of St. Clair Beach, Puce and Belle River.)
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